diagnostic port while S.E.C.T.A. is able to translate most of the error codes you get on Seagate F3 drives. This may seem like nothing new. Other utilities such as Putty or Hyper terminal do the same thing. Yet with time the diagnostic port has seen great improvements with its capabilities and a simple terminal emulator is not good enough anymore.

What Makes This Utility Different?

Finding yourself here you probably have run into a same problem -resolve firmware related issues on many Seagate F3 hard drives requires an understanding of how firmware is structured. It also requires knowledge about commands and their sequences and the ability to upload and download parts of firmware data. The same applies to some Samsung and Toshiba drives. Most data recovery technicians, engineers and experts know the level of frustration when dealing with terminal commands. Not all hard drive firmware related problems can be “fixed” via diagnostic port and not all drives uses serial port the same way.
When we started working on this project we wanted to simply create a list of available commands and have them issued with point and click method rather than typing the full command. HDD Serial Commander attaches to an existing serial COM port which corresponds to an existing USB-Serial (TTL) or a simple RS-232. In most cases we used Arduino UNO or Arduino MEGA. It also works with any other USB-Serial hardware (PC3000, MRT, Dolphins, etc.). The diagnostic commands are translated to “human” form and divided according to their levels. Commands can also be queued and then executed.

Commands Translated to Human Form?

With our outstanding user interface commands are sorted in an advanced data grid and grouped by descriptive levels.

Dynamic search by various command properties, filter out as you type;

Command usage info, appears by double clicking on each command. You get the whole command properties as tool-tip over the GO button;

Simply drag Command from the list to the Command QUEUE and double click to open the Command Builder;

Attribute Builder – lots of properties have multiple attributes that can be used as value. We extended the attribute information with additional description of that value. With check box next to the attribute it is now easy to select specific value for a command attribute

Why Contribute?

Recommended contribution of $50 will help to keep us busy. We have to translate more commands, keep updates coming, host running, etc. This way we can grow our community and share/learn more about serial diagnostic (terminal) commands frequently locked or disabled. Our recommended contribution is simply a suggestion. Feel free to change the amount.

Keep in mind only contributors have access to downloads of the latest version as long as this project is active.